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tabs.update()

Navigate the tab to a new URL, or modify other properties of the tab.

To use this function, pass the ID of the tab to update, and an updateProperties object containing the properties you want to update. Properties that are not specified in updateProperties are not modified.

Syntax

chrome.tabs.update(
  tabId,              // optional integer
  updateProperties,   // object
  function(tab) {...} // optional function
)

This API is also available as browser.tabs.update() in a version that returns a promise.

Parameters

tabIdOptional
integer. Defaults to the selected tab of the current window.
updateProperties
object. The set of properties to update for this tab. To learn more about these properties, see the tabs.Tab documentation.
activeOptional
boolean. Whether the tab should be active. Does not affect whether the window is focused (see windows.update).
highlightedOptional
boolean. Adds or removes the tab from the current selection.
mutedOptional
boolean. Whether the tab should be muted.
openerTabIdOptional
integer. The ID of the tab that opened this tab. If specified, the opener tab must be in the same window as this tab.
pinnedOptional
boolean. Whether the tab should be pinned.
selected Optional
boolean. Whether the tab should be selected.
urlOptional
string. A URL to navigate the tab to. 
For security reasons, in Firefox, this may not be a privileged URL. So passing any of the following URLs will fail, with runtime.lastError being set to an error message:
  • chrome: URLs
  • javascript: URLs
  • data: URLs
  • privileged about: URLs (for example, about:config, about:addons, about:debugging) . Non-privileged URLs (about:home, about:newtab, about:blank) are allowed.
callbackOptional
function. The function is passed the following arguments:
tabOptional
tabs.Tab. Details about the updated tab. The tabs.Tab object doesn't contain url, title and favIconUrl unless the "tabs" permission has been requested.

Browser compatibility

Chrome Edge Firefox Firefox for Android Opera
Basic support Yes Yes 45.0 No 33

Compatibility notes

Edge

  • 'highlighted' and 'selected' are not supported.

Firefox

  • 'highlighted' and 'selected' are not supported.

Examples

Navigate the active tab in the current window to https://developer.mozilla.org:

chrome.tabs.update({url: "https://developer.mozilla.org"});

Activate the first tab in the current window, and navigate it to https://developer.mozilla.org:

function updateFirstTab(tabs) {
chrome.tabs.update(tabs[0].id, {
    active: true,
    url: "https://developer.mozilla.org"
  });
}

chrome.tabs.query({currentWindow:true}, updateFirstTab);

Example add-ons

Acknowledgements

This API is based on Chromium's chrome.tabs API. This documentation is derived from tabs.json in the Chromium code.

Microsoft Edge compatibility data is supplied by Microsoft Corporation and is included here under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Document Tags and Contributors

 Contributors to this page: Makyen, Jeremie, wbamberg, jonathanKingston
 Last updated by: Makyen,